I was trying to teach myself to TIG weld, and I was struggling with it. My welder did not come with any means to adjust the current while welding, and I thought this might be the main source of my frustration. I did have a socket to plug a foot controller into though, so I started to do some research. The name brand foot controller made for my welder was well out of my price range after buying the welder, argon tank, and all the necessities. I started to think about building my own and eventually realized a mechanical design using mostly stuff I had on hand. After a thorough search of the internet, I found a service manual for my particular welder that gave me enough information and confidence to quickly disassemble my new welder and probe its foot control socket with a multimeter. Now I had learned enough to complete the electrical portion of the foot controller. A potentiometer is used to control the analog input on the welder, and a micro switch starts and stops the arc at the full counter clockwise rotation of the pot. The hardest part of the project turned out to be finding the matching plug for the socket on the welder. I just wasn’t willing to hack the new welder with a makeshift connector.